Marcus Aurelius’s Rules for a better life

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, as I mentioned I think in the reminder on Stoicism, I mentioned Marcus Aurelius who was the Caesar of Rome and an amazing human being. He was unlike any other Caesar that you can think of or read about. He was a stoic and a very wise man. Now he's written this book which is called Meditations and obviously I don't have to say that it's definitely worth reading and also worth following the stuff that he talks about. Here are four different things that he has mentioned and this was in one of the Twitter posts from the Daily Stoic. There's a Twitter site called Daily Stoic and they send, you know, every day they post something from Stoics, different Stoics. Now he says four rules for a better life and this is from Marcus Aurelius, the Caesar of Rome. First and foremost he says focus on the essential. Focus on the essential. He says if you seek tranquility, which is peace of mind, if you seek tranquility do less, not nothing, less. Do only what's truly important, which brings a double satisfaction. You get to do fewer things and you get to do those fewer things better. Remember this rule daily. Keep a reminder in place. You will often see. Focus only. On what's essential. I'm going to repeat that. I'll repeat all of these. He says focus first rule of a better life. First rule for a better life. Focus on the essential. If you seek tranquility, do less. Not nothing. Less. Do only what's truly important. Which brings a double satisfaction. You get to do fewer things and you get to do those fewer things better. Remember this rule daily. Keep a reminder in place that you will often see and focus only on what's essential. Now the tool that I teach with this is what I call my three by three rule. And that three by three rule is that every day you begin your day with three things that you need to do. You need to do three things that you need to do. You need to do three things that you need to do. So, in my product here at My Childhood School. This will only hit one hurdle. So, it's this one. One that I'll set the two pickles. I will write out five goals for the entire class. I will send you a list here of all theレ that you need to accomplish. So, three things completely and all the opps always get left out of the box. So, that group three. Three things. Obviously, you can't check it with those three things. You want to know your schedule. Repeat your work your process and you're good to set it up. All right. Now, let me show you two things that you should do today. Three of them I will explain. First one is the day you only realize on 책 itself. One thing you do that's a key. goal. If you have no life goal, then you're going nowhere and you can't get there. So, before that comes, what is your life goal? Why do you exist? What are you supposed to do? How do you want to live your life? So, life goal. Based on the life goal, what are the three things that I must do today? Then start on the first one, complete it, go to the second, complete that, go to the third. If you get interrupted, say you're doing the first thing, you get interrupted, come back and complete that first thing. Do not go to the second one, skipping the first. That's very important. You start on the first thing, complete it, then go to the second thing. If you can't complete the first thing for some reason, then do not go to the second one until you complete the first thing. You get interrupted, come back and complete. In the evening, you look at what you accomplished. And again, journal, write down. You started off with three things. You were able to do all three, excellent. Then you write in that journal, what is it that helped you to accomplish those three things? You could not accomplish some of them, one of them, two of them. Then write down what is it that came in the way, what prevented you from accomplishing those, the things that you could not do. And this is the lesson for the next day, which is you will do more of what works and you will do not less, but nothing of what doesn't work. You will eliminate the problems and you will do more the promoters will do more of the things that help you. The next day, you begin with again, a list of three things. Now, in that list of three things on the the second day, don't just put mindlessly what is left over from the previous day. Write three things for the second day as starting from zero. Now, it may have something from the previous day, but you're doing that consciously because you have thought about that and because you think it is important, right? So, this is Marcus Aurelius' focus on the essential and my commentary and my, hopefully, value addition to that. Second one. He says, don't suffer imagined troubles. Don't suffer imagined troubles. He said, don't let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Stick with the situation at hand. Focus on the moment. Waste no time thinking about the monsters that may or may not be up ahead. Now, this is a paradoxical thing, especially for intelligent people because the mind is intelligent. And one of the things that we need to do is to think about the situation. And one of the things that the mind does, and it's a, in itself, it's a positive thing because this is how your mind is helping you to remain safe, which is, it is anticipating difficulties, it is anticipating problems and trying to think of solutions to those problems before the problems occur. But like all good things, you take it beyond a certain limit and it causes trouble because then you are stuck in a future over which you have no control and over which you have no control. You don't even know if it will happen, but you're living there and the present gets ignored. The present gets ignored. You don't know what will happen in the present. You know what will happen in the present, but you ignore it. You don't pay attention to it and you suffer because of that. So don't let your own intelligence sabotage you by imagining all kinds of difficulties, which will never happen. Stay with the present. The benefit of staying with the present is, first of all, we enjoy the present. You are fully in it, so you enjoy it, even if it's difficult. Second thing is, the reality of life is, the future depends on what you do today. Right? It is your actions today which will determine the future. Sure, there will be some things in the future that are not directly related to your actions. For example, if the share market collapses or there is rain or if it is raining and you can't stop the rain, you can't stop. You can't stop the market from collapsing. But certainly by your actions, you can have investments which will not be impacted by the market collapse or at least will be impacted less than others. So it depends on what you do. Now, for example, if you're invested in gold, then the market collapse doesn't affect you. If you're invested in real estate, maybe it doesn't affect you. Maybe in some cases it does, but not to the same extent. So don't suffer imagined troubles. Stick with the present time and do your best there. Number three, never be overheard complaining, not even to yourself. So, one of these is so, you know, that's why I said these stoics were people who were so close to Islam. Uh, never be overheard complaining, not even to yourself. Hassan was walking down the street. He overheard two people talking. One man was complaining about his life to another man. Hassan was disturbed. Rahul al-Ali. He said to them, he said to the man who was complaining. He said, what a strange man you are. You are complaining about Ar-Rahman to the one who has no Rahmah. Hmm. Ar-Rahman is Allah SWT, obviously. He said, you're complaining about Ar-Rahman to the one who has no Rahmah, which is the human being. And when he said complaining about Ar-Rahman, the man was not complaining about Allah as such, but he's complaining about his life. And the life is given to him by Allah SWT. Allah SWT is the one who writes his Qadr. Allah SWT is the one who wrote for him, whatever was happening to him. And instead of being at peace with that, instead of being, may Allah grant us this, the highest level is Ridha bil Qadr. So to be, to be pleased with the Qadr of Allah SWT, to be pleased with the Qadr of Allah SWT. Uh, but at least minimum is not to complain, but instead of that man is complaining. So Marcus O'Reilly says, you're complaining about Ar-Rahman. You're complaining about Ar-Rahman. You're complaining about Ar-Rahman. He says, never complain, never be overhead complaining, not even to yourself. And he says over and over again. Now he says, look inward, not outward. Don't complain. Don't meddle in the affairs of others. When you see someone acting objectionably, remember when you have acted the same way. The Stoic is too busy improving himself or herself to waste time criticizing others. By distinguishing between what we can and cannot control, it becomes clear. That only our choices, deeds, words and thoughts deserve our focus. Everything else concerns others, not us. And that is my motto in life. I will not allow what is not in my control to prevent me from doing what is in my control. I will not allow what is not in my control to prevent me from doing what is in my control. So this is very important to keep in mind. Don't get sidetracked. And, um, I'm not going to say that I'm not going to say that I'm not going to say that I'm not going to go off about a complaining about this and that, if there is a problem. This is the, my theory, which I teach a master and victim victims are people who complain, who blame others for what's happening to them. It's always somebody else's fault, right? And if they can't find anybody else, they blame God. They say, what to do? This is my, this is my fate. Uh, but otherwise they, they blame everybody else. You know, they, they blame their parents. They blame God. society, government, this, that, this enemy, that enemy.